Going to a fire

Senior editor Carla Savalli said we stumbled a bit with the coverage of the wildfire in Stevens County. “I just think we could have done better,” she said. “I don’t think we conveyed what was really going on up there.”

Missing from today’s story, Savalli said, was the human element. “There’s no drama there,” she said.

There were problems with mobilizing for the fire. Assistant city editor David Wasson said there was a lot of conflicting information about the size and scope of the fire early on. Editors discussed sending two reporters to the scene, but instead opted to send one while having another make phone calls from the newsroom. Savalli said in the future, we shoul derr on the side of sending too many people versus sending too few. “No one will ever be second-guessed for sending too many resources,” she said.

Photo intern Joe Barrantine argued that on the positive side, we didn’t blow the fire out of proportion. Some television coverage, he said, was over the top and made the fire look like Armaggedon had arrived.

“I think we kept it in perspective pretty well,” he said.

Assistant city editor Dan Hansen disagreed. “It’s a bigger deal than we made of it.”

Some other issues related to the fire coverage:

• Online coverage. The story was updated frequently yesterday, and Hansen, Wasson and reporter Jody Lawrence-Turner scrambled this morning to get an update online. We’re still at a disadvantage to the TV stations, who have reporters out much earlier than we do in order to get material for early-morning broadcasts. Editors asked whether it would be worthwhile in situations like this to have a reporter at the scene overnight to update the Web site.

• User-submitted photos. The TV stations actively solicit photos from viewers and use them on the air and online, and we may look at ways to do that on our site.